Do You Need a Book Tour?

Once on a flight home from Boston, I sat next to an A-list author. We got to talking and found out that we were both authors; she was visiting Washington for an exhibit that she literally wrote the book for. I asked if she toured very often.

No, she replied. She didn’t travel very much to promote her writing. In fact, the last really good deal she got from a publisher was in 2003 when the publisher paid for a major book tour. Since then the publishing industry has cut back significantly on marketing. If you want to go on book tour, authors are expected to pay for it themselves with minimal support from the publisher.

So do you need a book tour? It is an expensive proposition, and one that may not be worth it. There are many marketing opportunities such as blogging and radio interviews that you can do from the comfort of your home. And you can do many events in your home market where you know the audience best.

How do I sell my books? I give a lot of talks. A lot. I suspect a high proportion of all my books out there have my signature in them. Think broadly about events that hit a large audience: book fairs, interviews, op-eds and radio shows. Your job is to get as much press as you can – that’s the point of giving talks.

For my first book, The Prohibition Hangover, I sent myself on a national book tour in fall 2009. It was exhausting, as I had to work my day job at the same time (I had a really cool boss). I spent about $6,000 of my own money and did more than eighty events through the end of the year. I got home from the road and looked five years older. 

I met some really interesting people along the way and got to see some places like Cincinnati that I had never visited before. I spent two lovely weeks visiting my parents in California and spoke at Google as part of the Authors@Google program (spectacular, spectacular). But I also learned that traveling to another city is pointless if you don’t have an existing social network. Don’t expect people to show just because you throw an event. The adage, “Book it and they will come,” sadly isn’t true. 

For my second and third books, Prohibition in Washington, D.C. and The Potomac River, I never left the Washington area. There was no need to (they were both local/regional books). But I held probably four dozen events for Prohibition in Washington, D.C. in 2011. 

So do you need a book tour? Probably not. But do you need to promote your work? Absolutely. If you don’t promote, then it simply won’t sell. Just think carefully about where you can best spend your time and money to reach the broadest audience. It may well be from your desk.

Garrett Peck

www.garrettpeck.com

A Gang of Swindlers: Advances

You often hear about authors being paid an "advance," but just what is it? An advance is a pre-payment on your future royalties. This is the publisher’s swag on how many copies they think you’ll sell for a book title. You won’t get another royalty check until you exceed the sales forecasted in the advance. For many authors, the advance is the only money they’ll ever see. Most books only sell a few thousand copies. 

Read that again: most books sell only a few thousand copies. At most.

For first-time writers, your advance will be small, unless you are a major public figure. Bill Clinton got $10 million for My Life. His wife Hillary was paid $8 million for Living History. Alan Greenspan got $8.5 million for The Age of Turbulence. Senator Ted Kennedy received $8 million for True Compass (published posthumously). Tony Blair, former prime minister of Great Britain, got $9 million to pen his memoirs A Journey: My Political Life. Sarah Palin got $5 million for Going Rogue. How’d their agents get the advances so high? They sold the books via an auction until one bidder finally emerged as the winner. But unless you’ve been the head of state, you won’t see an advance anywhere near what these people made. 

The major publishers throw immense resources at books they hope will be blockbusters. The Wall Street Journal reported, “With such high stakes and money tied up in a few big projects in the pipeline, the need to score big with a next project becomes more pressing, and the process repeats itself. The result is a spiral of ever-increasing bets on the most promising concepts, creating a ‘blockbuster trap.’” (Anita Elberse, “Blockbuster or Bust,” WSJ, January 3–4, 2009). Publishing, like major league sports, has become a winner-take-all game, where a few authors get much of the publisher’s attention (and marketing dollars), while the vast majority of books are simply distributed with little fanfare or support.

I remember seeing a full-page, color ad in The Washington Post for David Plouffe’s The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama’s Historic Victory (2009). Plouffe was Obama’s campaign manager, and the publisher purchased this tremendously expensive advertisement. It must have cost them tens of thousands of dollars. It was an example of how high the stakes are – and how much the publishers need these expensive books to pay off.

Journalist and literary critic H.L. Mencken didn’t think too highly of the advance system, and he was a man who wrote some thirty books. He wrote in his memoirs:

"I have always refused to take advances on my books, and I have urged Knopf to cease giving them to other authors. More than once, sitting at the board table of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., I have heard him report substantial payments to frauds who have made off without producing anything printable – payments that have swelled unpleasantly the profit-and-loss account of the company. He insists, however, that he must follow the trade practice, or lose good books. As for me, I’d rather lose them than pay tribute to a gang of swindlers. Very few really competent and worthwhile writers, I am convinced, would go away if advances were suspended – and the money now wasted upon them might be used to increase the royalties of men and women who produce profit for the house. But the publishing business, like every other American business, is burdened with many evil precedents and traditions, and such vain expenditures are among them."

H.L. Mencken, My Life as Author and Editor* 

Mencken had a way with words, didn’t he? A “gang of swindlers”… that’s us writers!

Publishers for years have been talking about reforming the advance system, and advance payments are getting smaller for rank-and-file writers. Yet they haven’t been able to make a clean break from this system: whenever a big name author throws a book into the ring, the major publishers all bid on it, sending the advance price higher and higher.

I’m no public figure, though I have published three books. So what kind of advances have I been paid? Well, my first book, The Prohibition Hangover, got a four-figure advance. My next two books earned no advances at all: the History Press simply doesn’t pay them. I make it up with royalties on the back end. 

*Mencken’s memoirs weren’t published until 1992. He stipulated in his will that the memoirs were to be embargoed for thirty-five years, and that way all the people he wrote about would be dead. Jonathan Yardley, a book reviewer for The Washington Post, edited the memoirs. In that tome I also found Mencken’s recipe for the “Coffin Varnish,” a boozy martini, and included this in Prohibition in Washington, D.C.

"Some time before the Thirteen Awful Years [Prohibition] began, we had acquired in Del Pezzo’s restaurant, then in 33rd Street opposite the Pennsylvania Station, the formula of a cocktail that we called the Coffin Varnish – one-third vermouth, two-thirds gin, and a dash of the Italian bitters, Fernet Branca – and this we served to our guests." 

H.L. Mencken, My Life as Author and Editor 

Cheers!

Garrett Peck

www.garrettpeck.com

To Blog - Or Not to Blog?

To Blog – Or Not to Blog

As a writer, should you blog? It’s time consuming and you won’t make any money from it, but there are intangible benefits. If you have a large following, it can help build your platform – your qualifications for publishing. Publishers will ask you about the number of followers and amount of traffic on your blog. It also gives you a platform to market your book: many followers will purchase the book.

With blogging, you are giving away your art for free, and contributing to the consumer attitude that all things digital should be free. Plus blogging takes an enormous amount of time to write: you can’t just write down a few ideas, but you have to write entire essays which, it’s worth repeating, you give away for free. Blogging isn’t a sustainable business model for most people. That said, I do have several friends who have turned their blogs into book deals, notably John DeFerrari, who turned his Streets of Washington blog into a dynamite book, Lost Washington, D.C.

I started this blog, Throwing Spaghetti, shortly before my third book, The Potomac River was published. I get a few dozen hits each week (in the two months since I’ve launched it, I’ve gotten more than 1,300 hits), so it is being read, but then again I’m not Andrew Sullivan, who probably gets hundreds of thousands of hits each week. 

An alternative to blogging is “microblogging.” That is, using Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. You use the status update features on those social networking sites to engage your readers. It is far less time consuming, as you can post an update in under a minute. Social media is “the poor person’s publicist,” as I like to call it.

I both blog and microblog. But I also understand why many people don’t blog: blogging takes an enormous amount of time that they simply don't have, and many readers don't have time to read your extensive essays. But short, continual updates on social media can be far more manageable. Microblogging is less time consuming – for you and your readers. People are awash in information, and your blog often becomes another drop in a vast ocean of noise. 

Shortly after my first book, The Prohibition Hangover, came out in 2009, I was walking down 18^th Street in Washington, DC and passed what was the Lexis-Nexis building. This is a firm that provides content for law firms and other businesses on a subscription basis. The entire building stood vacant and a “For Lease” sign was draped over the front door. One more business model threatened by free content. It gave me pause to wonder how we writers can make a living at our craft if all content becomes free.

Garrett Peck

www.garrettpeck.com

Seneca Quarry on Metro Connection

Have you ever wondered where the bright red sandstone came from that built the Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall in Washington, DC? It came from the Seneca quarry, a long-forgotten site in western Montgomery County, Maryland, right on the Potomac. It is perhaps my most memorable research discovery in The Potomac River: A History and Guide.

The Smithsonian Castle (1847). Photo by Garrett Peck

The quarry – or rather, quarries (there are six of them) – are overgrown with brush and trees and almost inaccessible since they shut down early in the twentieth century. It’s especially remarkable seeing the Seneca stone cutting mill, built in 1837, which looks like a ruin in the Peruvian jungle – only it’s bright red. It sits only a few hundred feet from the Seneca Aqueduct on the C&O Canal, yet most people walk past without ever noticing it.

The Seneca Stone Cutting Mill (1837). Photo by Garrett Peck

Last week, I took Rebecca Sheir, host of WAMU 88.5 FM’s Metro Connection, out to the Seneca quarry to show her the site. She recorded our visit, which will play on Friday, March 30 at 1:00pm – and rebroadcast on Saturday, March 31 at 7:00am. Afterwards it will be posted as a podcast – and you’ll also find an extensive photo essay, thanks to my friend and professional photographer Tom Espinoza who served as our official photographer for the outing.

We also met Bob Albiol, the man who restored and lives in the quarry masters house above the Seneca quarry. He knew a tremendous amount about the quarry and its operations, and he even told us that an illegal still operated out of one of the quarries during Prohibition. I’m already planning a return visit. 

WAMU's Rebecca Sheir interviews Bob Albiol, who restored and
lives in the Seneca Quarry Masters House (1830). Photo by Garrett Peck

This was my second time on Metro Connection: we did a segment in 2011 about the bar Dirty Martini in Dupont Circle, which was the high-end speakeasy the Mayflower Club in the waning days of Prohibition. Click here to listen to that Prohibition podcast. 

I hope you’ll tune in this Friday at 1:00pm to Metro Connection!

Garrett Peck

www.garrettpeck.com